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Foxglove Field

Foxgloves make great cut flowers and are prized for their spikey form.

If you like cut flowers in your home you probably don’t like the cost of buying them. Even in supermarkets, the price tag isn’t cheap, and the cost can add up if you purchase them on a regular basis.

So why not grow your own? With a cutting garden, you can avoid the extra costs that growers in South America pass along to consumers for transporting their flowers great distances. You can avoid the toxic chemicals used in growing acres of mass-produced flowers, and you can provide much-needed nectar and pollen for insects.

But before you rush out to the garden center to add some plants to the yard, consider these tips for growing and harvesting cut flowers:

Create a dedicated bed for your cutting garden. This allows you to group together plants with the same watering and feeding needs.

Choose a site that receives the full sun that most cut flowers require for blooming and work in plenty of rich organic matter, such as compost, for providing lots of nutrients.

Start seeds indoor in late winter for transplanting to the cutting garden in spring.

Plant in rows rather than groups. This makes your garden easier to maintain when it comes to watering, weeding, fertilizing and cutting.